The rise to prominence of environmental challenges has been a striking development in world politics over recent decades. The growth in awareness of, and governance responses to, environmental challenges in the international community has provided the opportunity structure within which policy entrepreneurs sought to build a distinctive international profile for the EU in the world. This chapter critically assesses how the evolution of global responses to environmental challenges has influenced the development of EU foreign policy. It provides an account of scholarly attention to environmental issues within the social sciences and especially within International Relations (IR). The final section is future-oriented, asking how future conditions of environmental degradation are likely to enable and constrain foreign policy. In doing so, it highlights in particular the growing need to focus scholarly research on climate change mitigation and adaptation, and climate change’s interactions with the human systems that comprise world politics.
Aasne Kalland Aarstad, Edith Drieskens, Knud Erik Jørgensen, Katie Laatikainen, and Ben Tonra